Station MOON (Dec, 1946)

It seems the Army was a bit over optimistic. The first man made object to impact the moon was the Russian probe Luna 2 on September 14, 1959.

Station MOON

Radio rocket planned by Army would send hourly signals from the Moon.

STATION MOON may soon be calling Earth. The U. S. Army is constructing a Moon-bound radio-carrying rocket which it expects to complete early in 1948.

The missile will weigh only 100 lbs., including a 50-lb. radio capable of transmitting its signals across the intervening quarter-million miles of space.
At its calculated speed of 4,000 mph, it should reach the Moon in 60 hours. A time device will turn on the radio for one minute of broadcasting every hour, both during the journey and for several days after landing. A proximity fuse will detect the nearness of the Moon, cut off the forward rockets and turn on reverse ones, providing an easy landing.

Hmm, Whoever wrote the article seemed to be just making things up. Even Jules Verne knew that a spacecraft would have to travel at 25,000 miles per hour to escape the earth, and Hohmann transfer orbits were first calculated in the 1920’s.

Looking it up in my “Spaceship Handbook” (I know GEEEK!) the most economical trip to the moon requires a delta V of 16.48 miles per second and a transit time of 8.5 days. They knew these things even in the 1940’s.